My feeling is we need laws to stop it
I might not like a certain feature, but I'd dislike the government preventing companies from adding features a whole lot more. The thought of that terrifies me.
(To be clear, legitimate regulations around privacy, user data, anti-fraud, etc. are fine. But just because you find AI features to be something you don't... like? That's not a legitimate reason for government intervention.)
I don't know what that means grammatically.
But you could ask, what is so terrifying about exerting democratic control over people's free speech, over the political opinions they're allowed to express?
The answer is, because it infringes on freedom. As long as these AI features aren't harming anyone -- if your only complaint is you find their presence annoying, in a product you have a free choice in using or not using -- then there's no democratic justification for passing laws against them. Democratic rights take precedence.
If voters Democratically decide to do something, that's democracy at work.
If a Supreme Court strikes down a majority-passed law limiting free speech guaranteed by the Constitution, that's democracy at work.
And no, that would be the courts at work, which may or may not be beholden to the whims of other political figures.
Go ahead and try, but I don't think you'll find that an amendment to restrict people's freedoms is going to be very popular. Because it will be seen as anti-democratic.
I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here.
Voters restrict their own freedoms all the time. Hell, my state recently passed a law preventing Ranked Choice voting.
Yes voters try to restrict their own freedoms all the time. We have constitutions with rights to block them from doing that in fundamental ways. That's what protection from tyranny of the majority is all about. Just because you have a majority doesn't mean you're allowed to take away rights. That's a fundamental principle of democracy. Democracy isn't just majority rule -- it's the protection of rights as well.
Nobody is FORCING you to go to that restaurant so it's antidemocracy to take away their freedom to not wash their hands when they cook?
Why do you say this ? They are clearly harming the privacy of people. Or you don't in privacy as a right ? But, a lot of people do - democratically.
Trying to regulate whether an end-user feature is available just because you don't "like" AI creep is no different from trying to regulate that user interfaces ought to use flat design rather than 3D effects like buttons with shadows. It would be an illegitimate use of government power.
And as far as I'm concerned, as long as Google and Apple have a monopoly on smartphone software, they should be regulated into the ground. Consumers have no alternatives, especially if they have a job.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Code and software are very much forms of speech in a legal sense.
And free speech is regulated in cases of harm, like violent threats or libel. But there's no harm here in any legal sense. People are just unhappy with the product UX -- that there are buttons and areas dedicated to AI features.
Companies should absolutely have the freedom to build the products they want as long as there's no actual harm. If you merely don't like a UX, use a competing product. If you don't like the UX of any product, then tough. Products aren't usually perfectly what you want, and that's OK.
You're not being forced to use the AI features. If you don't want to use them, don't use them. There's zero antitrust or anticompetitive issue here.
Your argument that Google and Apple should be "regulated into the ground" isn't an argument. It's a vengeful emotion or part of a vague ideology or something.
If I want blenders to be sold in bright orange, but the three brands at my local store are all black or silver, I really don't think it's right for the government should pass a law requiring stores to carry blenders in bright orange. But that's what you're asking for, for the government to determine which features software products have.
You can't turn them off in many products, and Microsoft's and Google's roadmaps both say that they're going to disable turning them off, starting with using existing telemetry for AI training.
> Your argument that Google and Apple should be "regulated into the ground" isn't an argument. It's a vengeful emotion or part of a vague ideology or something.
You're just continuing to ignore that all of this is based on their market dominance. There are literally two options for smartphone operating systems. For something that's vital to modern life, that's unacceptable and gives users no choice.
If a company gets to enjoy a near-monopoly status, it has to be regulated to prevent abuse of its power. There's a huge amount of precedent for this in industries like telecom.
> If I want blenders to be sold in bright orange, but the three brands at my local store are all black or silver, I really don't think it's right for the government should pass a law requiring stores to carry blenders in bright orange
Do you really not see the difference between "color of blender" and "unable to turn off LLMs on a device that didn't have any on it when I bought it"?
Do you really not see that there is no difference?
Either the government starts dictating product design or it doesn't.
I don't want a world where the government decides which features software makers include or turn on or off by default. Whether there are 20 companies competing in a space or mainly 2.
Don't you see where that leads? Suddenly it's dictating encryption and inserting backdoors. Suddenly it starts allowing Truth Social to build new features and removing features on Twitter.
This is a bigger issue than you seem to be acknowledging. The freedom to create the software you want, provided it's not causing actual harm, is as important to preserve as the freedom to write the books or blog posts you want.
If this had something to do with antitrust then the fact that there are only two major phone platforms would be relevant. But the fact that both platforms are implementing LLM features is not anticompetitive. To the contrary, it's competitive even if you personally don't like it. It's literally no different from them both supporting 1,000 other features in common.
What an asinine comparison lol
When I buy a book, I don't want the government deciding in advance which paragraphs should be included, and which paragraphs people "shouldn't have to listen to". So I don't want it doing that with software either. It's the same thing.
You don't have to buy that book in the first place. The same way you don't have to use a piece of software.
It's better to assume good faith when providing a counter argument.
Because you think it’s not?
What if I, and many other people, think that it is?
2) Business speech is limited in many, many ways. There is even compelled speech in business (e.g. black box warnings, mandatory sonograms prior to abortions).
And legally, code and software are considered a form of speech in many contexts.
Do you really want the government to start telling you what software you can and cannot build? You think the government should be able to outlaw Python and require you to do your work in Java, and outlaw JSON and require your API's to return XML? Because that's the type of interference you're talking about here.
In the US, commercial activities do not have constitutionally protected speech rights, with the sole exception of "the press". This is covered under the commerce clause and the first amendment, respectively.
I assemble DNA, I am not a programmer. And yes, due to biosecurity concerns there are constraints. Again, this might be covered under your "does no harm" standard. Though my making smallpox, for example, would not be causing harm any more than someone building a nuclear weapon would cause harm. The harm would come from releasing it.
But I think, given that AI has encouraged people to suicide, and would allow minors the ability to circumvent parental controls, as examples, that regulations pertaining to AI integration in software, including mandates that allow users to disable it (NOTE, THIS DOESN'T FORCE USERS TO DISABLE IT!!), would also fall under your harm standard. Outside of that, the leaking of personally identifiable information does cause material harm every day. So there needs to be proactive control available to the end user regarding what AI does on their computer, and how easy it is to accidentally enable information-gathering AI when that was not intended.
I can come up with more examples of harm beyond mere annoyance. Hopefully these examples are enough.
The topic of suicide and LLMs is a nuanced and complex one, but LLMs aren't suggesting it out of nowhere when summarizing your inbox or calendar. Those are conversations users actively start.
As for leaking PII, that's definitely something for to be aware of, but it's not a major practical concern for any end users so far. We'll see if prompt injection turns into a significant real-world threat and what can be done to mitigate it.
But people here aren't arguing against LLM features based on substantial harms. They're doing it because they don't like it in their UX. That's not a good enough reason for the government to get involved.
(Also, regarding sonograms, I typed without thinking -- yes of course the ones that are medically unnecessary have no justification in law, which is precisely why US federal courts have struck them down in North Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky. And even when they're medically necessary, that's a decision for doctors not lawmakers.)
I emphatically disagree. See you at the ballot box.
> but it's not a major practical concern for any end users so far.
My wife came across a post or comment by a person considering preemptive suicide in fear that their ChatGPT logs will ever get leaked. Yes, fear of leaks is a major practical concern for at least that user.
If someone is using ChatGPT, they're using ChatGPT. They're not inputting sensitive personal secrets by accident. Turning Gemini off by default in Gmail isn't going to change whether someone is using ChatGPT as a therapist or something.
You seem to simply be arguing that you don't like LLM's. To which I'll reply: if they do turn out to present substantial harms that need to be regulated, then so be it, and regulate them appropriately.
But that applies to all of them, and has nothing to do with the question at hand, which is whether they can be enabled by default in consumer products. As long as chatgpt.com and gemini.google.com exist, there's no basis for asking the government to turn off LLM features by default in Gmail or Calendar, while making them freely available as standalone products. Does that make sense?
But also, you're going to have to be more specific about what tracking you're worried about. Cell towers need to track you to give you service. But the parking app only gets the data you enable with permissions, and the data the city requires you to give the app (e.g. a payment method). So I'm not super clear what tracking you're concerned about?
If you don't use your smartphone for anything but paying for parking, I genuinely don't know what tracking you're concerned about.
The reason I don't like these sorts of features is because I think they are harmful, personally
Lots of people actually find them useful. And the features are being iterated on to improve them.
It is no different from passing legislation to ban spam or mandate that newsletters have one-click unsubscribe buttons. I hate living a world where corporations are unaccountably disrespectful to their users. Laws are how you hold them accountable. I don't care if the justification for the laws is competition or spam or what. It's simply the point of laws: to give society power over things that individuals can't easily have power over, so that they may improve their lives. To argue that we shouldn't improve our lives is absurd. The only justification for not doing it would be that it is immoral to do so, which it is not. Otherwise the only remaining question is whether we can rally the political will to do it. Not likely in the short term, but, the way things are going I expect it will happen eventually.
But not "almost everyone" hates them. Plenty of people like them and use them. You're ignoring that.
And think about applying your argument to free speech. If most people don't like an opinion, should we ban it?
You shouldn't be able to ban things you merely don't like. There needs to be some kind of legitimate harm. Having Gemini in your Gmail isn't creating any harm.
Correct, especially when the features break copyright law, use as much electricity as Belgium, and don't actually work at all. Just a simple button that says "Enabled", and it's off by default. Shouldn't be too hard, yeah? You can continue to use the slop machine, that's fine. Don't force the rest of us to get down in the trough with you.
I have a big problem with a government forcing companies to enable toggles on features because users complain about the UX.
If there are problems with copyright, that's an issue for the courts -- not a user toggle. If you have problems with the electricity, then that's an issue for electricity infrastructure regulations. If you think it doens't work, then don't use it.
Passing a law forcing a company to turn off a legal feature by default is absurd. It's no different from asking a publisher to censor pages of a book that some people don't like, and make them available only by a second mail-order purchase to the publisher. That's censorship.
I have a big problem with companies forcing me to use garbage I don't want to use.
>If there are problems with copyright, that's an issue for the courts -- not a user toggle.
But in the meantime, companies can just get away with breaking the law.
>If you have problems with the electricity, then that's an issue for electricity infrastructure regulations.
But in the meantime, companies can drive up the cost of electricity with reckless abandon.
>If you think it doens't work, then don't use it.
I wish I lived in your world where I can opt out of all of this AI garbage.
>Passing a law forcing a company to turn off a legal feature by default is absurd.
"Legal" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. You know the court system is slow, and companies running roughshod over the law until the litigation works itself out "because they're all already doing it anyway" is par for the course. AirBnB should've been illegal, but by the time we went to litigate it, it was too big. Spotify sold pirated music until it was too big to litigate. How convenient that this keeps happening. To the casual observer, it would almost seem intentional, but no, it's probably just some crazy coincidence.
>It's no different from asking a publisher to censor pages of a book that some people don't like, and make them available only by a second mail-order purchase to the publisher. That's censorship.
Forcing companies to stop being deleterious to society is not censorship, and it isn't Handmaid's Tale to enforce a semblance of consumer rights.
That pretty much sums it up. And the answer is: too bad. Deal with it, like the rest of us.
I have a big problem with companies not sending me a check for a million dollars. But companies don't obey my whims. And I'm not going to complain that the government should do something about it, because that would be silly and immature.
In reality, companies try their best to build products that make money, and they compete with each other to do so. These principles have led to amazing products. And as long as no consumers are being harmed (e.g. fraud, safety, etc.), asking the government to interfere in product decisions is a terrible idea. The free market exists because it does a better job than any other system at giving consumers what they want. Just because you or a group of people personally don't like a particular product isn't a reason to overturn the free market and start asking the government to interfere with product design. Because if you start down that path, pretty soon they're going to be interfering with the things you like.
I am dealing with it, thanks, by fighting against it.
>I have a big problem with companies not sending me a check for a million dollars. But companies don't obey my whims. And I'm not going to complain that the government should do something about it, because that would be silly and immature.
Because as we all know, forcing you to use the abusive copyright laundering slop machine is exactly morally equivalent to not getting arbitrary cheques in the mail.
>In reality, companies try their best to build products that make money, and they compete with each other to do so.
In the Atlas Shrugged cinematic universe, maybe. Now, companies try to extract as much as they can by doing as little as possible. Who was Google competing with for their AI summmary, when it's so laughably bad, and the only people who want it are the people whose paycheques depend on it, or people who want engagement on LinkedIn?
>The free market exists because it does a better job than any other system at giving consumers what they want.
Nobody wants this!
>Because if you start down that path, pretty soon they're going to be interfering with the things you like.
I mean, they're doing that, too, and people like you look down your nose and tell me to take that abuse as well. So no, I'm not going to sit idly by and watch these parasites ruin what shreds of humanity I have left.
> Nobody wants this!
OK, well if you don't believe in the free market then sure.
Good luck seeing how well state ownership manages the economy and if it does a better job at delivering the software features you want, or even of putting food on your table. Because the entire history of the twentieth century says you're not going to like it.
Huh.
Your argument boils down to "it is wrong for people to defend themselves from corporations", but the cases you're making are incoherent. It seems like you believe this but don't know why you believe it and you're making up gibberish to defend it. I'd suggest you stop and analyze why you believe this--like what you really think will happen, and why you really think people do not have a right to defend themselves. Personally I can think of no situation where it is moral to say: people should not defend themselves. The concept seems absurd. To me all of human history is evidence that people do, always, have a right to defend themselves, and much evil has been perpetrated by the notion that they should sit down endure abuses instead.
We're talking about a UX choice and you're talking about people "defending themselves" as opposed to "enduring abuses" coming from "much evil"?
The justification you're proposing is the same one that censors free speech, because people want to defend themselves from certain ideas, or things they just don't "like".
There's no harm here. Nobody's attacking you. You're not being abused. We're talking about a software feature you think is inconvenient that it takes up space on your screen.
I think companies should have the freedom to design products the they want, as long as it's not causing harm. Which in this case, it's not. You just don't like it. But that's not harm. If you don't like it, don't use it. Same as if you don't like a book, don't read it.
Rights and freedoms exist for a good reason. They're not absolute because they can conflict with each other, but in this case there's zero conflict. There's no justification for the government to start dictating Google's UX in this case.
Bull. Free markets are subject to a lot of pressures, both from the consumers, but also from the corporate ownership and supply chains. The average consumer cannot afford a bespoke alternative for everything they want, or need, so are subject to a market. Within the constraints of that market it is, indeed, best for them if they are free to choose what they want.
But from personal experience I know damn sure that what I really really want is often not available, so I'm left signalling with my money that a barely tolerable alternative is acceptable. And then, over a long enough period of time, I don't even get that barely tolerable alternative anymore as the company has phased it out. Free markets, in an age of mass production and lower margins, universally mean that a fraction of the market will be unable to buy what they want, and the alternatives available may mean they have to go without entirely. Because we have lost the ability to make it ourselves (assuming we ever had that ability).
But that's just life. I genuinely don't understand how you can complain that not every product is exactly the product you want. Companies are designing their products to meet the needs of millions of people at the price point they can pay for it. Not for you personally.
We have more consumer choice than we've ever had in modern history, and you're still complaining it's not enough?
Even when we lived in tribes and made everything ourselves, we were extremely limited in our options to the raw materials available locally, and the extremely limited ability to transform things. We've never had more choice than we have today. I cannot fathom how you are still able to complain about it.
Issues that do plague the current market in the US, that impact my household enough to notice, are:
1) Product trends. When a market leader decides to go all in on something, a lot of the other companies follow along. We've seen this in internet connectivity, touchscreens in new cars, ingredients in hair care products, among others. This greatly limits the ability of consumers to find alternatives that do not have these trends. In personal care products this is a significant issue when it comes to allergies or other kinds of sensitivities.
But in general just look at the number of people who complain about things such as a lack of discrete buttons for touchpads. Not even Framework offers buttoned touchpads as an option, despite there being a market for them.
It's obvious that it's the vocal, heavy spenders who determine what's on the market. Or it's a race to the bottom in terms of price that determines this. It's not the average consumer.
2) Perfume cross-contamination as an extension of chemical odors in general[0,1]. In recent years many companies with perfumed products such as cleaning agents have increased the perfume or increased its duration with fixatives. This amplified after so many people had their sense of smell damage during early COVID (lots of complaints about scented candles and the like not having an odor anymore, et cetera).
This wouldn't be a problem from a consumer point of view except that the perfumes transfer to non-perfumed products - basically anything that has plastic or paper absorbs second-hand fragrances pretty well. I live in as close as we can get to a perfume-free household, for medical reasons. It's effectively impossible to buy certain classes of products, or anything at all from certain retailers, that doesn't come perfumed. There are major stores such as Amazon and Target that we rarely buy from as we have to spend a lot of money, time, and effort to desmell products (basically everything purchased from Amazon or Target now has a second-hand perfume).
It's possible to have stores that have both perfumed products and non-perfumed products such that perfume cross-contamination doesn't occur. But this requires the appropriate ventilation, and isn't something that's going to happen unless one of the principals of the store has a sensitivity.
And then there are perfumes picked up in transit from the wholesaler, trucking company, or shipping company.
I hope someday to win Powerball or Mega Millions so that I can start a company dedicated to perfume-free household basics. That are guaranteed to still be perfume-free on delivery.
0 - https://www.drsteinemann.com/faqs.html
1 - https://dynamics.org/Altenberg/CURRENT_AFFAIRS/CHINA_PLASTIC...
On the other hand, it's never been easier to buy fragrance-free versions of detergents, cleaning products, personal care products, etc. When I was growing up, they didn't exist at all -- everything was horribly scented. Now "free" or "free and clear" is a whole product category. Literally everything I buy is fragrance-free, and it's wonderful. Little of it's available at my local CVS, but it's all available on Target.com or Amazon. Thanks to the free market.
And when you say "it's the vocal, heavy spenders who determine what's on the market" that's not true at all. It's the race to the bottom in terms of price, which you say, but that is the average consumer. The average consumer wants to spend less. You can spend more to get better products, usually.
Trends really are cost-driven and consumer-driven. If companies make things people really don't like, people stop buying them and the companies change. There are a million examples, from New Coke to the Apple touchbar. You're arguing the free market is failing, but it really does work. You're demanding something better, but when you add government intervention to dictate how products are made, that's generally going to make things worse, because why would the government be better than free competition for consumers' wallets?